


For Real, For Good

by anneapocalypse



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-13
Updated: 2012-07-13
Packaged: 2017-11-09 20:50:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/458237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anneapocalypse/pseuds/anneapocalypse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The King reflects on his long friendship with Pacer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Real, For Good

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stpitbull](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stpitbull/gifts).



They were young when they ran. Teenagers. Wandering kids, leaving behind the broken scraps of family most of whom could care less if they lived or died. Running east. Broke, drunk, hungry and high across desert, mountain, city and town. They’ve never told anyone here about those days - when their names were ordinary, before they became the men Freeside knows.

Before they were Kings, they were learning how to be kings, masters of their own lives, learning it drunk and stupid along ruined highways, learning it going broke in seedy bars and sleeping in doorways. When they could barely buy food but somehow managed to scrape together caps for booze and chems. Learning, no matter how drunk, to pocket every cap off every beer bottle. How to pull the last fumes out of a near-empty inhaler of Jet. That habit Pace never quite kicked when they settled down.

The King doesn’t tell these stories to anyone, not just because it’d be breaking character but because those old stories are so tinged with desperation, on that knife-edge of survival and loss. Even now, when he’s the last one who knows them, he can’t tell them. Those stories don’t belong to Freeside, not even to the Kings. They belong to him and his old friend, and they’ll die with them.

There were good times. Times like a night in some little shit-nowhere settlement near the California border, a shantytown with a tin saloon like to collapse in on itself at any moment. They were up that night, having done a few jobs and won a few games and he in his drunk-happy high tossed a heap of those caps into a round of cheap liquor for everyone in the place, and his friend was loosened up enough he didn’t even protest. A drifter fellow with a steel guitar and a mustache and a rich, gravely voice was banging out an old tune in the corner and they got to nodding along, and though no one else knew the words, he’d hear that song again one day and remember.

Later that night they went up to the roof of the only solid building in that town, the cinderblock box that served as the town hall. It was small, but had a shaky metal ladder up the back wall, and on the roof they could sit and drink and lay back and look at the stars in the clear sky and feel like kings.

Oh, there were bad times too. Bad nights, bad crowds, fights, getting jumped on the way out the back after winning a stack of caps at poker or pool or whatever else they could bet on. Deals gone bad. And it was nearly always his friend who threw the first punch, at the first sign of trouble. Trust ain’t in my vocabulary, he’d say. And his friend’s distrust probably saved them more than once. Kept ‘em away from a few bad deals. Kept more’n a few thugs from getting the jump on them. Nights their luck should’ve run out, should’ve seen ‘em both flattened on some stretch of broken asphalt, his old friend’s quick eye and deadly fists had them walking on, alive another day.

From the other angle, his own optimism brought them good more than once. He’d meet a person, get a good feeling about ‘em. Give ‘em a chance even though his friend didn’t like it. Met more’n a few good folks that way. And having friends, people who’ll do you a good turn when you’re in need, that’s something caps can’t buy. Seemed his old friend would wager on anything, long as it wasn’t human goodness. The King still believes in that. Knows he’d be dead quite a few times over if it didn’t exist.

Before they were Kings, when they were just two reckless boys, the dream was in chance, in risking and losing and risking again and winning. And when they found the School, when they became the Kings, he’d considered that their big win. The one that finally changed their luck for real.

Maybe settlin’ wasn’t the right life for Pace after all. Maybe that’s why he had to keep on unsettling it. Or maybe the King should’ve been more forceful, telling him to lay off the Jet and the fights. Lot of maybes, lot of shoulds. No answers coming from staring at the spot in the ground where his oldest friend lies settled for good. The King pulls a black handkerchief from the pocket of his white jacket. Pace wouldn’t approve of him getting like this, either, but he’s always believed there ain’t no shame in honest grief. Ain’t no words for this, not even words from an old familiar song. There are times a man’s tears are the only thing can say it.


End file.
